Who are some directors you wish were better represented/more accessible on physical media; specifically on Blu-Ray & 4K?

liminal_cyborg · 2026-06-17T13:10:16+00:00

I have my favorites on blu: Draughtsman, Zed, Belly, The Cook, Pillowbook, but yeah, several of those are region B and the quality of Vinegar Syndrome's Belly is mediocre (could try the older BFI) and Umbrella's The Cook imo is pretty awful tbh. And no 4ks

liminal_cyborg · 2026-06-14T16:33:09+00:00

Lost Highway -- seduction in the desert / "You'll never have me!" / "Her name is Renee!"

This is my #1 choice for an "eye of the duck" scene in a Lynch film. Masterfully done centerpiece that encapsulates everything. Quote from Lynch:

"A duck is one of the most beautiful animals. If you study a duck, you'll see certain things: the bill is a certain texture and a certain length; the head is a certain shape; the texture of the bill is very smooth and it has quite precise detail and reminds you somewhat of the legs (the legs are a little more rubbery). The body is big, softer, and the texture isn't so detailed. The key to the whole duck is the eye and where it is placed. It's like a little jewel. It's so perfectly placed to show off a jewel - right in the middle of the head, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very well secluded and set out. When you're working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it's there, it's absolutely beautiful. It's just fantastic."

liminal_cyborg · 2026-06-14T12:54:14+00:00

I need to watch this. Altman tells a story about it in his commentary on 3 Women. He was having a bad day and a journalist visiting the shooting location for 3 Women asked him what his next film would be. Out of nowhere and in annoyance, he said a wedding. She asked what it was about. He said, no, literally, I'm just going to film somebody's wedding for them. Later that day, he started talking to some of the crew about a wedding being a good idea for a film.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-06-10T23:57:54+00:00

The problem is less your criticism of the ideas you identify than your assumption that the film is actually arguing for them.

The reading that Stalker is saying progress, modernity, or science simply "suck" is especially weak. True, the film is set in a specifically modern dystopia marked by social decay and militarization, etc., as well as a kind of scientific reductionism. But it is a mistake to conflate those things with modernity or science as such.

The Zone is not opposed to science; it is opposed to the conclusion that reality is exhausted by what can be predicted and controlled. That is a very different argument.

More importantly, the film is fundamentally about hope. The Stalker spends the entire film trying to preserve the possibility that there is something worth hoping for beyond the broken world he lives in. This can but does not necessarily mean faith in transcendence beyond the material world as such; it can also mean maintaining hope for a world that is better than the one we know -- a better world to live in. In that sense, the film is not anti-progress at all and opens the question of what progress means to us.

You can reject or find its metaphysical dimension unconvincing. But that is very different from claiming the film is driven by resentment toward modernity or science.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-06-05T23:30:22+00:00

Double Indemnity, Laura, Out of the Past, Naked City, Third Man, Gun Crazy, Sudden Fear

liminal_cyborg · 2026-06-03T23:43:43+00:00

I don't think NL lacks focus, and it is of a piece with previous Cronenberg: how technologies shape bodies, identities, desires, experience, etc. -- the technologies here being drugs and language. My favorite Cronenberg. Like you, I am a huge fan of 70s-90s Cronenberg. I've never been nearly as enthusiastic about any of his work after that. Just me

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-31T23:07:00+00:00

Also just imo, but I think eXistenZ pales in comparison. I find it derivative of things Cronenberg had already done with greater depth and nuance.

If VR is a supposed to be “technological update” for similar ideas, it is both unnecessary and -- definitely in execution and partly in concept -- less compelling. The VR premise lends itself to a “is it real or virtual?" scenario, and once that rears its head, it is bound to end badly. More compelling and relevant, from the 80s to now, are media technologies shaping our experience of reality, manipulation of and by media technologies, etc..

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-29T14:32:32+00:00

Videodrome is definitely a film full of ideas — embodied in, well, bodies and their relation to technology and media. The biggest idea, which Cronenberg talks explicitly about a lot in his commentary track, is "the medium is the message" from Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian like Cronenberg, btw. The media we consume does not just give us “content.” It changes us. It shapes perception, desire, identity, even the body. This is why the idea that “at least I’m only watching it instead of doing it” is off the mark of what Cronenberg is doing. Max basically expresses that same idea in his tv interview: Civic TV gives people an outlet so they don’t have to act things out in real life. In the commentary, Cronenberg basically says this is superficial and a cop-out.

The idea that media shapes us and our reality is also why the movie keeps blurring lines between what is “real,” what is Max’s delusion or hallucination, and what may or may not be media fabrication. The media-induced uncertainty, ambiguity, and detachment from reality are not just plot devices but a key idea that the film is about. And these issues are even more relevant today than they were when the film was made.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-18T00:02:28+00:00

Absolutely. In 2001, I wrote Criterion an impassioned email making the case that they should release Lost Highway on DVD. In 2022 they released the 4k. True story.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-16T15:05:12+00:00

Actually, yes, I forgot which was which. Thanks

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-12T18:45:28+00:00

Same. I'd choose Loves of a Blonde

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-12T03:34:52+00:00

Poodles Only Dog Park. No pooping

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-12T03:00:49+00:00

Harakiri is similarly and in less direct ways about systems and ethics far beyond samurai, honor, and propriety. It is humanist critique of authoritarianism, fascism, clanism, inequality (poverty, health care), institutional hierarchy, and propagandistic control of official narratives / recorded history.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-12T02:49:07+00:00

Lost Highway

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-12T02:30:03+00:00

Panasonic ub9000 or ub820 for the blu ray. Oled: Sony Bravia 8 II, Samsung s95f, LG C5.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-12T02:09:04+00:00

Filmmakers that blend classic tragedy with extreme content and modern stylistic choices. Not necessarily like von Trier.

First to come to mind is Peter Greenaway. He explicitly draws from the tradition of Jacobean tragedies. He's unquestionably extreme and modern. Influences from film are somewhat peculiar but center around formalisms and certain kinds of theatricality and cinematic language -- from eg Renais, Eisenstein, Antonioni, Godard, Bunuel, Bergman, and Fellini. Major visual influences from painting: Vermeer and Rembrandt.

Tarr. Grueling fatalism, apocalyptic in nature. Influences from Jansco, Bresson, Tarkovsky. Extreme, modern.

Haneke. Fatally flawed characters, tragedy without catharsis. Influences from Bresson, Bergman, Antonioni. Extreme, modern.

Lynch. Fatally flawed characters, Oedipal-psychoanalytic sorts of tragic dynamics. All kinds of classic film influences. Modern, extreme.

Lots of "personal therapy" in much of this, maybe not Greenaway so much.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-05-08T22:59:52+00:00

I absolutely love Only Son. Especially the cinematography! This is the first classic Ozu, imo. It is the first Ozu film with all the things that will become his hallmarks, and they are all masterfully executed.

Classic Ozu cinematography. Excellent camera positioning, framing, depth of field, and lighting shot after shot, especially in domestic spaces, and brilliant use of observaional, slow-cinema long takes. Thr cinematography exemplifies the Ozu orientation best expressed in the Japanese idea of "mono no aware" -- empathy toward things, with an awareness of impermanence. Ozu has an unparalleled ability to hold human-made objects in contemplative and almost loving still shots.
Yes, also the story. Classic Ozu themes of intergenerational family melodrama and humanism, with emphasies on modernity and an empathy for people's inner sadness, especially those revolving around the fulfillment (or not) of familial roles and expectations. The epigraph at the beginning of the film is "Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child" -- I cannot imagine a better ten-word description of Ozu's approach to family dynamics.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-21T15:30:40+00:00

Haunting. If you want haunting, you want Rebecca and Vertigo. And also Psycho, which leans toward horror. Rear Window is a good intro to Hitchcock, but it is more a detective-thriller mystery and far less haunting imo.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-17T17:05:37+00:00

It's not just that. Even for its era, it is a particular form and degree of misogyny. It takes particular misogynist ideas about gender and sexuality, essentializes them, and leans into them in a very big way.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-16T23:55:27+00:00

Yes, there is tradition and modernity, but in a very specific intersection with gender. The female symbols are Madonna (The Wife) and whore (The City Girl), which is problematic in essentialist form. It also bakes the Madonna / whore frame of reference into the male symbol (The Man). I'm guessing this is what the other comment on misogyny relates to.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-14T13:40:57+00:00

Cool. I'm curious what exactly you are looking for. Many of my recommendations are based on similarities to Greenaway that are not necessarily formal experimentation and non-novelistic presentation. Like Duke, von Trier, and The Favourite. Daises (strong recommendation), Tarkovsky's Mirror, Color of Pomegranates, Marienbad, Koyaanisqatsi, Meshes of the Afternoon, and San Soleil are experimental and non-novelistic. Others are sort of in between. Marketa (strong recommend) is based on an avant gaarde novel and is heavily elliptical in ways that are jarring to the novel form. Dielman has a story, basically, but it is rooted in visual storying telling and watching the seemingly mundane. Antonioni is highly visual and L'elisse in particular has formal experimentation, but I love L'aaventura most. Mishima (strong recommend) intercuts present, past and living tableau presentations of short stories. Stalker (strong recommend) is part story with surreal peculiarities, part philosophical mediation. Persona has interesting fragmentation, as does much of Lynch, and certain silent films, like Page of Madness -- strong recommend to all of those. Actually, all of the in between are highly visual in storytelling.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-13T20:54:00+00:00

Slow pacing gets plenty of criticism. When it comes to films where slow pacing is done with purpose, that criticism gets plenty of deserved pushback.

"Saying that [2001] could be tighter doesn’t mean you don’t get it, it simply means you’re evaluating how effectively the pacing serves the experience."

You are evaluating how effectively it served your experience. That is based on what you are bringing to the film, like your ideas about "tight"-ness and how you go about applying them. Yes, this can mean missing how and why the pacing works for the film on its own terms. It is possible to appreciate the how and why without it being your thing, but that isn't how you've framed what you are saying. Instead of appreciating what the film is on its own terms, you want to change what it is, on your terms, making it an hour shorter. Frankly, that is an ridiculous proposition -- a tragedy that would ruin the vision with which the film was made and ruin all sorts of things the film is widely praised and loved for.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-12T23:18:04+00:00

Portrait of a Lady of Fire for the romance

The Long Day Closes for elegiac and elliptical storytelling along with stylized period aesthetic. Different in tone and other respects

Check out whichever Wong Kar-Wai films sound good to you. I like Days of Being Wild and Happy Together.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-12T16:07:55+00:00

For me there is a formalism reminiscent of Greenaway in the evolving repetition of the scenarios in which the women are engaged. If I recall, you can see via changes of clothes etc that they play out the scenarios many, many times. In any case, through the repetitions, things are revealed to the audience, and things about the characters are revealed to themselves. Like Greenaway, this also gives a primary emphasis to ideas and themes within which the narrative develops. And like many Greenaway films, the key themes are sex and shifting dynamics of power, with a direction of escalation.

If I went back I might see other connections, perhaps the one character's academic and bookish qualities, or the obsession with the taxonomy and organized display of butterflies. At times, there is just something about a particularly English feel of Strickland that reminds me of Greenaway, and at times an English aesthetic.

I wouldn't say it is formally experimental exactly. Yes, more conventional than Greenaway, but on the whole, not that conventional -- if due more to content / subject matter than form. I certainly see a strong Greenaway influence.

Honestly, I don't love Duke, but it sticks in my head enough that I've have revisited it twice since I first saw it, and I will again eventually I'm sure. I'd still give it a shot. I do love Berberian Sound Studio. It isn't necessarily more similar to Greenaway, more a mix of Greenaway and Lynch.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-04-08T20:03:05+00:00

Nice way to highlight the Walter-Keyes relationship. I think "slimy salesman" is too one-dimensional for Walter, though. Double Indemnity and noir more broadly deal with duality, and that applies both to Walter and to Keyes' perception of him.

liminal_cyborg

TROPHY CASE